​The painting Orchid, on which this screenprint is based, dates from 1998 and is one of Tuymans' best-known and most emblematic works. The artist explains how he was inspired by the idea that certain flowers change gender in reaction to climate change. This led Tuymans to paint an orchid, a flower with a strong feminine and erotic connotation.
Orchid is characterised by a high level of tension. The yellow-green tints allude to fertility and growth, but the mud brown is a reminder of decay and sterility. The colors may be organic, but the flower nevertheless makes an artificial, almost toxic impression. Tuymans claims to have borrowed the fluorescent green color from the transparent plastic cover of a notepad. So we see what was originally a colorful flower through an artificial filter, which enhances the enigmatic aspect.
Tuymans' Orchid might have been taken from Charles Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal, in which a 'sublime carcass' is compared with 'a flower that is just opening'. Green is not only the color of budding nature but also of rotting.
Orchid is an ode to the beauty of decay, a vanitas emblem for today.